My late, Scottish mother had a very pertinent saying: “If you sleep with a dog, you’ll wake up with fleas.” It seems appropriate today, as MLB – now partnering with all manner of sports books and gambling enterprises – has dropped the hammer on a number of players who were found to be betting on baseball games. The biggest punishment was meted out to Padres infielder Tucupita Marcano, who received a lifetime ban, and became the first active player to be banned for gambling in a century. He wasn’t even very good at it, winning just 4.3% of bets. But what got him the “death sentence” was betting on games involving the Pirates, when he was on the team’s major-league roster last year, albeit on the IL.
Betting on other baseball games is still prohibited for players, but carries a lighter penalty, of a one-year suspension. Sadly, those caught up in that net include D-backs’ reliever Andrew Saalfrank, who appeared for the team as recently as April 29, and was key part of the bullpen which got Arizona to the World Series in 2023. He appeared in 11 post-season games, posting a 3.18 ERA, but had struggled this year and was sent to the minors after allowing four runs in one-third of an inning against the Dodgers. The ESPN report provides details of the bets as follows, which happened in 2021-22 and suggest that Saalfrank was also not very good at the betting thing.
He placed four bets on the big league Diamondbacks while on the injured list of their Low A farm team. His baseball bets totaled $445.87 on baseball, including $444.07 on MLB, and lost $272.64 on MLB bets and $1.80 on the college wager. He won just five of 28 MLB bets, which included outcomes, runs and pitcher strikeouts.
Well, I guess that does at least support the players’ statements that they did not have any inside information about the games in question. Unlike the Shohei Ohtani interpreter situation, these bets were apparently placed through a legal betting site. Indeed, it was the company in question – unnamed to this point – who tipped off MLB in regard to the situation. I imagine there can’t be too many Andrew Saalfranks and Tucupita Marcanos in the phone-book. But it begs the question: how in the hell did Saalfrank NOT know this was going to be problematic? I’m not a professional baseball player, and even I know that there are rules against this kind of thing hanging up in every clubhouse.
As a result, Saalfrank will now be stuck in limbo for a year, and ineligible to return to close to his 28th birthday. I wonder if this affects his service time? I imagine it probably does, and goes into the deep freeze while he is on suspension. But you would have to be an idiot to think that these will end up being the last such cases. Gambling is now inextricably linked, not just with baseball, but to all pro sports, with MLB all too happy to take money from “respectable” firms who, not long ago, would have been pariahs to the sport. Those fleas are now coming home to roost.